


Symbios

by bam_cassiopeia



Category: Star Wars (Marvel Comics), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Doctor Aphra (Comics), Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Background Relationships, Dubious archaeological practices, Friendship, Gen, I had to go there, No tookas were harmed, Purrgils, The Force, Travelogue, art analysis, basically the nerdiest thing I ever wrote and that's saying something, symbiosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-27 00:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15012794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bam_cassiopeia/pseuds/bam_cassiopeia
Summary: Sabine and Ahsoka go on a quest for a boy and his purrgils.





	Symbios

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smols-darklighter (gallifreydriel)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreydriel/gifts).



 

 

Days went by, all of them different, all of them the same. Different, because the galaxy was a big place, stuffed full of the strange and the unexpected and the utterly mundane. The same, because there was a certain monotony in _searching_. Every day felt defined by an absence that could not be ignored.

But there was a certain comfort in that thought, Sabine found. When she was a child, mournfully staring at the aroa flat cakes planned for dessert, her father used to tell her the wait made the first bite all the sweeter.

It was the same now. Someday, her search would be over, and the galaxy would still be there to experience.

 

~

 

The first days on Ahsoka’s ship were awkward, but it was a familiar kind of awkwardness, that which Sabine knew often came at the beginning of cohabitation: boundaries and habits weren’t established yet, leaving them both a bit uncertain of where they stood. But it wasn’t the first time Sabine came aboard someone else’s ship for a long-term mission, and there was a kind of familiarity in that, reassuring in its own way.

They both liked waffles in the morning. Ahsoka drank blue milk in the evening, Sabine in the morning. They didn’t agree so well on Corellian tubers. Morai, Ahsoka’s too-intelligent convoree, did not like being petted; she showed affection by accepting food from your hand, but she only perched herself on Ahsoka’s shoulders. Ahsoka, Sabine found, meditated twice a day if she could and although she did not seem to mind interruptions, Sabine resolved to try and avoid those. Another thing Ahsoka didn’t seem to mind was her itching to paint over the sad grey walls of the impersonal ship. Sabine first tested the waters with a small design, a convoree in a corner of the communal room; once Ahsoka declared it lovely, long fingers hovering over the painting as if she wanted to pet it, Sabine felt free to add more and more. Ahsoka answered to every new piece with delight that rang true.

“I love those colors,” she said once, looking like her own words surprised her. “Vivid,” she added. “Alive.” On her shoulder, Morai hooted, a low sound that Sabine thought was approving.

Sabine’s hands were still full of paint and she smeared some on her cheek when she tucked a rebellious lock of hair behind her ear. “Thanks,” she said, fighting the sudden urge to hug Ahsoka.

 

“I heard the Rebellion had a Jedi,” Sabine said the third morning over plates of waffles, because she couldn’t not ask at some point. _Why aren’t you with them? Why me?_

Ahsoka took her time to answer. “I’m no Jedi,” she finally said, without sadness but a carefulness to the tone, a weight to the words. “My path is different,” she added and in that too were layers of meaning Sabine could barely guess at.

But she understood enough. She hadn’t spent much time on Mandalore in the last few years. It was still home in many ways, and she missed it, but other things called to her.

 

~

 

Sometimes, the whole expedition seemed a bit… hopeless. Not in the sense that she didn’t have hopes of seeing Ezra again: Sabine knew she would, somehow -- a certitude Ahsoka attributed to the Force. _It doesn’t matter whether you can use it_ , she’d replied to Sabine’s protestations, smiling like a child sharing a secret. _The Force is in you as much as it’s in me; it’s there for you as much as it is for me. You only have to listen._

Maybe it was only because she _wanted_ to believe it that Sabine did, but believe she did. Someday her path would cross Ezra’s again. Someday, she’d bring him home.

No, the hopeless aspect of it was the expedition itself. How do you find one person, one boy lost in the vastness of the galaxy, when you don’t even know where to start?

Although they did know. You start with the purrgils, the great spacefaring beasts who’d dragged him away, ship and all, because it was hard to consider any option other than Ezra still being with them, aboard the ISD Chimaera. Even with all the unrest in the galaxy, if he’d escaped it, he would have found her or Hera or Ahsoka or -- anyone. This too, Sabine didn’t doubt.

And so, the purrgils. Who were, it turned out, far from easy to find themselves, for giant space mammals.

 

Purrgils’ migrations patterns, Sabine and Ahsoka learned without much surprise, were not a documented subject -- assuming there were patterns at all. Purrgils in general were badly known, most of what there was to find more folklore than fact. As a species, they were enshrouded in myth -- or what sounded like myth; on Terdan they were seen as emissaries of the Force; in ancient records from the Anoat Sector’s Advisers they were marked down as bad omens; the inhabitants of a planet with an unpronounceable name believed them to have created the world. Stories originating from Wild Space said the further from the Core the bigger they grew, and that beyond mapped space there were some big enough to eat whole planets.

Some of the legends felt familiar -- _purrils travel through unknown means_ , an account of an expedition from the Taril Era said. _There’s this great big one -- male? Female?, with an eye blinded by a massive, very recognizable scar that I saw near Palanhi, part of the shoal that played (there are no better words for what they seemed to be doing) near the fleet, and I saw it again today, four days and ten jumps later… I’m starting to think there’s truth in the old stories. The captain certainly seems to think there is; zhe calls the purrils ‘pathfinders,’ and says one of zher’s ancestors once followed one to a treasure planet. This part at least certainly sounds like a tall-tale, but I have seen wondrous things, and feel less inclined than ever to doubt more wonders await in the far reaches of the galaxy..._

 

~

 

At the University of Bar’leth, they met with an exobiologist, who sent them to one of his colleagues, who in turn sent them to another colleague, who then gave them both the name of yet another colleague, this one described as extremely eccentric, and a historian who collected purrgils stories. Ahsoka did most of the talking -- she was the patient one. Sabine followed, and tried not to let her frustration with the slowness of the proceedings blow up at anyone’s head.

She was mildly successful.

 

The eccentric colleague was of little help; purrgils, she explained bitterly, did not interest anyone beyond their status as _danger_ . “Of course,” she said, falling into the rhythmic cadences of a well-known speech, “if we did study them we _could_ effectively reduce that level of danger. If there are patterns to their journeys, there are astronavigation variables to account for it. If there aren’t, the shoals can still be monitored and accounted for.” Her shoulders drooped, then. “It’s just easier to stop at _threat_ . But purrgils don’t _mean_ to make damage; they’re peaceful creatures, only aggressive when aggressed. They’ve already been driven off their habitat -- nowadays, the more coreward you go, the less chances you have to find one, but it wasn’t always like this…”

 

“That was sad,” Sabine said when they left the woman with both a new list of locations possibly favoured by purrgils and heavy hearts.

“It is,” Ahsoka agreed. That night, Sabine didn’t sleep, painting instead. Purrgil after purrgil, a great shoal of them, and in the background, the vast darkness of space, the occasional shining star.

And on one of the purrgils’ back, almost invisible, the silhouette of a boy.

 

The next day, the historian shared some of their stories in turn though they insisted, waving four muscular arms around, that they were no specialist. “I was lucky enough to see some when I was but a youngling,” they said, as if excusing themselves either for not knowing enough or for knowing too much, “and I’ve never stopped being fascinated.”

“They’re incredible creatures” Sabine agreed. The historian gave a cautious smile.

The details the historian shared felt too old and random to be useful -- Purrgils were said to come from the Deep Core in the most ancient known legends about them; there were fantastical stories about early explorers finding hyperspace routes by following them; they’d been hunted under the Xim Imperium, until -- and on this, the historian specified, the accounts differed, but everything pointed to a mega-shoal having attacked and destroyed a fleet, after which they’d been fearfully avoided. Some cultures had revered them, like the people of Terdan still did, or the extinct Helluvan whose sacred texts said purrgils traveled to a place outside the galaxy where deserving souls would join them after death.

“Excuse me,” Sabine said before the historian could move on to another bit of trivia. “A place outside the galaxy?”

“...Hmm? Oh, yes, I don’t quite remember all the details but I believe the Helluvan talked about it in length… For a given definition of talking. Helluvan left no texts, but instead extensive narrative murals in their temples. Those have been described in… hmmm, I think it’s De Mart’s _Elluva Excavata_ , let me look, won’t take long...”

 

It did, in fact, take long, and the description turned out to be no more than a few lines that seemed to be more speculation than observation. But it did mention a place outside the galaxy -- a mythic afterlife, the book said. Certainly not a real location.

“A place outside the galaxy,” Sabine told Ahsoka when they’d finally managed to thank and leave the historian. “You think…”

“Maybe.”  

“Seems worth checking out.” Maybe it was just because she was tired of unhelpful scientists and stake-outs for purrgils that never showed up but right now, a day or two looking at art seemed like a welcome respite. And she’d lived through enough weird events in temples not to discount the possibility of finding some sort of clue there.

 

The Helluvan homeworld was called Symbios, and it was a barren wasteland shrouded in darkness, which felt familiar. It also had a sulfur-rich atmosphere, a detail the historian had forgotten to mention.

“I think,” Ahsoka said slowly, looking at one of the few pictures they’d found of the planet’s surface, “that we’re going to need a guide.” On her shoulder, Morai hooted, a laugh-like sound. Not for the first time, Sabine found herself wondering just how much the convoree understood.

“No disagreeing on that,” Sabine replied, wrinkling her eyes at the picture, trying to discern anything but darkness. Was that the outline of a huge building she saw, or her eyes tricking her into seeing something, anything? “I know just the person,” she added, thinking back to one of Hera’s stories. Maybe Sabine was exaggerating a bit, but _exploding tookas_. No way she was passing an occasion to meet a fellow artist. She’d probably keep that detail from Ezra, though.

“She’s just going to be… hard to convince.”

 

~

 

The archaeologist was called Chelli Lona Aphra, though she kept to Aphra and, sometimes, Doctor. When they found her in a dive bar in the Cosmatanic Steppes, she was drunk, although not so drunk she couldn’t negotiate for Sabine and Ahsoka to pay her tab in exchange of even listening to their proposition. After that, she still insisted to sleep it off beforehand, and Ahsoka agreed under the condition that Aphra would do so on the ship. Sabine would rather just have dunked her in cold water.

No tookas in sight, which was a bit of a deception, but probably just as well.

Aphra seemed no more well-disposed after a long sleep and a truly impressive helping of waffles, laughing long and hard at the suggestion of being anyone’s guide on Symbios, dark hair dancing around shaking shoulders.

After calming down she added “No,” as if the laughter hadn’t been enough of an answer. “Hell no,” she said again, but she started on another waffle instead of leaving, so the negotiation table was still open.

Across from the archaeologist at the small table in the ship’s communal room, Sabine’s purrgils and stars behind her, Ahsoka leaned back into her chair and smiled. “Sabine told me you’d probably be hard to convince, but I think she was wrong,” she said. “You’re going to say yes.”

“You don’t know that, lady,” Aphra answered around a mouthful of food. “No offense, but I’m neither mad not suicidal.”

“But you’re bored,” Ahsoka said, smiling the serene smile Sabine had privately dubbed her Jedi smile.

“I like being bored,” Aphra shrugged.

Sabine snorted -- she didn’t the Force to hear it was a token protestation.

“You’re bored,” Ahsoka repeated, “and already calculating how much you’d get from Helluvan artefacts.”

At that, Aphra finally stopped eating. “Either you’re very good with people,” she said with a nonchalance that suddenly screamed _fake_ , “either you’re reading my mind. That’s not something I generally appreciate. Or encourage.”

“I’m very good with people,” Ahsoka said, ignoring the sudden tension around the table. “And I accessed your Archaeological Association file. You’re… predictable.”

“I am not,” Aphra protested, but she sounded amused and her shoulders relaxed. “Well, maybe a bit. And I _am_ bored.”

 

And so they left the Cosmatanic Steppes, hungover archaeologist in tow, for the world called Symbios and its ruins. From orbit, it was all shifting shades of shiny red, but when they ventured on the surface, wearing burly protective suits, they found a world in dark greys and browns. Even the air had a greyish tint, full of dust particles whipped by incessant contrary winds.

They landed near a city, one Aphra said was the capital, and where they would find the main temple of the Helluvan. “If it’s temple murals you want to see, it’s where you’ll find the most complete version.”

“How do you know that?”

“Dig reports. There’s not much published on Helluva -- just isn’t much interest. But the Archaeological Association archives _everything_. That’s just a thing we do. When we care about the job. Obviously not all of us do.”

“We know you don’t care,” Ahsoka said, managing to sound comforting.

“You’re worse than me.” Aphra shook her head in mock-deception. Ahsoka’s only answer was the kind of smile that made Sabine wish they’d met before -- everything.

 

From their landing site, they had a bit less of an hour of walking to reach the Temple, most of it through ruins so well conserved Sabine felt like she was walking into a tumb. Maybe all ruined planets felt a bit like this, like graves you don’t want to disturb.

Aphra didn’t seem to feel the same way -- soon enough she was pointing her flashlight to this and that, babbling a stream of random explanation. “That tower northwards, it’s the university, decent reputation in its time. Everything is built with locally sourced material; De Mart says it’s religious, but that’s what he says about everything he’s not sure about. It’s all gone now, but you’ve got to imagine the streets were lined with trees. Extinct now, but reconstructions say they had blue glowing leaves and probably doubled as public lighting.”

On and on she went, until the three of them reached the temple. In the darkness, it was hard to make out its limits, and the entrance was only visible as a darker patch. “No door,” Aphra explained. “For once I agree with De Mart, it’s probably a religious thing. Open to all at any time, you know? No door between you and… Whatever they believed in.”

 

Shadows shifted as they entered the building, like water slowly receding. Aphra raised her light high, and though she could barely discern the archaeologist’s face behind the protective visor of her suit, Sabine thought she was enjoying the reveal.

And what a reveal -- they’d entered a cavernous space, so huge the walls ahead lost themselves in darkness. The walls themselves rose high above their head, supporting a dome that, even in the darkness, seemed transparent, and they were painted in still-bright colors, blues and greens and indigoes in swirling, stylized patterns. The beauty, the sadness of it, so much life hidden away on a dead planet, took her breath away.

“Welcome,” Aphra said, her projected voice booming in the empty space, “to the Great Temple of the Helluvan -- a marvel of architecture for sure. Admire the transparent dome, intended to let in the light of the stars, and the murals, a peerless example of the Third Perletan style. The acoustics, also, are of exceptional quality, precisely calibrated, and on the other side of the room you will find sculptures of purrgils and a huge gong you probably shouldn’t strike because I’m not sure how solid this building really is. I’ll be off now, doing… archaeologist stuff. Scream if you need me. No, don’t scream, comm me.”

And with a wave of her flashlight, she was gone.

 

It took Ahsoka and Sabine three days to go through the murals, which was, in truth, a lot more time than they needed. But the art was unique, and beautiful, and forgotten. Sabine wanted to drink it in. Ezra would have understood, and Ahsoka didn’t protest when she proposed they record it all, not just the parts that seemed useful, so maybe she understood too.

Aphra didn’t seem to mind; she’d probably disagree, but Sabine thought she was content to wander in the ruins and shadows of things long dead, coming back to the temple’s entrance with bagfulls of objects once in a while. Sabine and Ahsoka helped bringing it all back to the ship in the evenings, and Sabine tried not to think too much about where the arterfacts would end up, and what the Helluvan would have thought of it. She’d made worst deals, and Aphra _was_ an accredited archaeologist after all, if not very preoccupied with things like methodology. Or ethics.

“None of that looks very precious,” Sabine observed the first evening, after the three of them had reached the ship and taken off their suits, pointing to a small mechanic contraption that could have been anything. Aphra laughed. “That’s a Gero prototype; there’s three of those in museums, and two in private collections. It’s priceless.”

Sabine almost asked what a Gero was and thought better of it. “Oh,” she said instead.

Aphra grinned. “Precious is relative. If that makes you feel better, nothing here is worth much to anyone who’s not, well, an archaeologist. Or a collector with obscure interests. There’s a few of those, but not that many, and even I don’t sell artefacts to private individuals without a seriously good payoff.”

“What about the Shadow Academy?,” asked Ahsoka, who’d been petting Morai, so silent Sabine had almost forgotten she was there too.

“Not a private individual,” Aphra said, her grin growing. “An almost respectable institution operating with the understanding you sometimes have to be… creative, when it comes to funding. Among other things.”

Ahsoka snorted. “From a certain point of view, I suppose it’s true.”

“Exactly,” Aphra said, and the two shared a grin while Sabine rolled her eyes.

 

~

 

The first day, the murals facing each other on both walls of the temple depicted similar scenes; not exactly identical, but somehow like they showed the same things from different angles. They told the story of people of a species neither Sabine nor Ahsoka recognized on a planet barely reached by light, looking to the stars, building little rafts and going spacefaring. Purrgils joined them then, huge besides the small ships. Some pictures were hard to understand. One showed a shoal of purrgils followed by ships in a wildly swirling vortex, and in another, a person and a purrgil floated face to face on a field of stars, linked together by wavy blue lines. The craftsmanship was of undeniable quality, the colors still fresh, the shades subtle, but the real beauty of the panels was in the sense of wonder that somehow radiated out of it. Like so much feeling had been poured into those walls that it was still tangible, thousands of years later.

During the second day they found scenes showing temples being built, more purrgils and more ships and more swirling vortexes and on every picture those wavy blue lines tying people and purrgils together. But now there started being differences in the facing scenes too, real differences: on the left wall, the panels continued in a similar vein. But on the right, although the images remained similar, the people started looking away from the stars and the purrgils and the wavy blue lines broke and disappeared into nothing, picture after picture. The changes became more marked: on the left, a temple bigger than any other was built; on the right, a battle, bloody and painfully detailed. Left, a crowd of people robed in white turning to light, leaving only a few in the darkness behind. Right, purrgils being hunted. And then, dark walls populated by a few luminous people on the left, and on the right, a succession of atrocities. Recording the images became painful then -- there was too much in there that was familiar, and they went back to the ship in a somber mood that evening.

The third and final day, Sabine and Ahsoka went back to the walls and their sad tale, but soon enough the pictures changed again, and slowly the right walls went back to a more peaceful story. Some of the wavy blue lines reappeared, and suddenly they were reaching the end of the room, the statues and gong Aphra had mentioned. Before them, a section of the murals that seemed to take more space than was really available, and where the story told by the walls ended.

On that final picture the people of the left and right walls were reunited, and the wavy blue lines rose high in a sky full of stars, opening into a wide circle from which purrgils poured out. Behind them, an intricate design of abstract shapes and circles within circles, the center one glowing almost painfully.

“A portal,” Sabine said at the exact same time Ahsoka did. “Maybe if you touch it…”

“Worth a try,” Ahsoka replied. Sabine took a few steps back, but nothing happened when Ahsoka touched the panel. She tried the portal and the purrgils, even the glowing dot at the center, though she had to climb on Sabine’s shoulders for that.

“Nothing,” Ahsoka said when she’d climbed down. “It’s just paint.”

“An image of a portal, then. Not an actual portal.”

“But it’s not a place -- there’s just those concentric circles inside.”

“Concentric circles,” Sabine repeated, something stirring at the back of her mind. One, two... seven circles, including the glowing dot in the middle. She’d seen things like that before, in fact, she’d seen something exactly like that before, she _had_...   

“A map,” she remembered. “It’s a map of the galaxy. The limits are different but look, the glowing dot is the Deep Core, the circles old rim limits, and that shape, there, it’s the Xim Emporium near its apogee.”

Ahsoka stared at the picture for a moment. “I think you’re right,” she finally said. “But where does it lead to?”

“The thing that’s unlike the others.” Sabine stared at the dot. “The center. Deep Core.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

 

~

 

They dropped Aphra near the research center of the Cosmatanic Steppes with two containers of artefacts and a generous bonus in credits.

“I can't believe everything went according to plan,” Aphra said by way of goodbye. “Tolvan definitely won’t believe any of it.” She shrugged, started fiddling with a pair of oversized sunglasses. “If you survive your next crazy trip and ever need an archaeologist again, you know where to find me.”

“Some dive bar?”

Aphra grinned. “Probably.”

 

Without the archaeologist, and despite her having spent only a few days in it, the ship now seemed much bigger -- she had a way to take up a lot of space and spread small tools and objects, even clothes in her wake. She'd left the suit she'd used, crumpled in a corner, and a stack of plates she should have passed under the sonic wash after the last dinner.

“Well,” Sabine said.

“Well,” Ahsoka replied, almost bouncing as she walked to the pilot’s seat. Morai hooted, a low, happy sound.

“Deep Core. How crazy does that sound?”

“Very,” Ahsoka said, a beautiful wild smile blooming in her face, blue eyes almost glowing with excitation. “So very crazy.”

Sabine slid into her own seat and smiled back, wide and happy, suddenly filled with the bubbly feeling of hope, pure and unadulterated. “So just like any other day, then.”

“Just like that,” Ahsoka confirmed, and then the stars turned into streaks of light and they were gone.  

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This one is for [smols-darlighter](https://smols-darklighter.tumblr.com), one of the loveliest people I know in fandom.
> 
> I’ve kinda wanted to try my hand at an Ahsoka and Sabine On A Quest fic since the Rebels finale, but I already had (and still have) about way too many things in the works and didn’t want to start another fic. Until smols sent me an edit three days ago and then suddenly I Had To and went over the planned 1k-ficlet mark in record time.  
>   
> Aphra (from the comics) kind of invited herself -- it’s a case of If I Had To Choose One Cameo, and then obviously I needed a reason for that and then… well. Might have overdone it on the purrgil lore a little, but with the recent Lucas quotes in mind I couldn’t _not_ bring symbiosis into it, and then Sabine and art analysis just go together.  
>   
>  (Did I name the Helluvan for the sake of a kitchen latin pun? Maybe, maybe not.)


End file.
